IRS Publishes “Top 1%” Data by State — California’s Top 1% in the Crosshairs

The IRS has shed some new light on the high-income Californians who are the targets of the state legislature’s tax-raising approach to budget balancing (IRS spreadsheet or Tax Foundation tabular summary).

By breaking out state-by-state its popular analysis of income and tax data, the IRS shows us that the top one percent of California taxpayers (150,000 people)—the same people who would pay the new, higher state tax rates of 10 percent, 11 percent and 12 percent —are already paying more in total federal income taxes than the 66 million people nationwide who make up the lower-earning half of US taxpayers.

California Republicans reject the tax-hike approach to budget balancing, and Governor Schwarzenegger has just thrown down the spending-cut gauntlet. He signed an order laying off temporary workers and withholding a portion of many other state employees’ salaries, starting at the end of the month unless the legislature sends him an already overdue budget.